Alawar

Alawar
Privately held company
Industry Video games
Founded Novosibirsk (1999 (1999))
Headquarters Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Russia
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Alexander Lyskovsky (CEO, co-founder)
Sergey Zanin (co-founder)
Number of employees
 100 (2017)
Website www.alawar.com

Alawar is a Russian company engaged in developing, distributing and publishing video games for PC, mobile platforms and other devices.

The company was founded in 1999. Its developer offices are located in Novosibirsk and Barnaul and employees more than 100 people.

The company became known through its shareware projects, having published more than 400 casual games since 1999, including Farm Frenzy, The Treasures of Montezuma, House of 1000 Doors, and others. The company's games are available on the largest game portals and services, such as Big Fish Games, Steam, etc. The total downloads for Alawar's casual games exceed 1 billion. The games are localized in 18 languages and sold in 50 countries.

In 2009, Alawar began developing and porting games for mobile devices, gaming consoles and social media, which are distributed via large native services: AppStore, Google Play, PlayStation Network and others.

Starting in 2016, one of the internal development teams has been creating projects based on new technologies, such as virtual reality, as well as its own software solutions.

Alawar owns one of the largest casual content distribution networks in Russia and CIS based on its own portal, Alawar.ru, and a partnership program incorporating over 5,000 participants, including Mail.Ru, Rambler.ru, etc. Since 2004, Alawar and partner websites have sold over 100 million copies of casual games. The combined monthly active audience is over 16 million users.

Since 2015, Alawar has been distributing games through Steam. It has developed several midcore projects, such as Beholder, Goliath, Displaced, and Distrust, specifically for this community of users. The total number of Alawar game users on Steam exceeds 500,000. After release on Steam, midcore projects are widely ported and distributed via other channels (Origin, Xbox Live, PlayStation Store) and platforms (iOS, Android, Facebook, etc.). Alawar releases 2–3 midcore games each year.

Alawar is an active host and participant of industry conferences, such as GDC, CasualConnect, GameConnection, Gamescom, etc.

Activities

Midcore games

Midcore games are more complicated, in-depth and intelligent compared to casual games, but not as grand-scale as Triple A projects. Midcore games mostly attract young and middle-aged males with solid gaming experience. The company releases 2–3 midcore games each year. Main projects: Beholder, Goliath, Distrust, Displace, and others.

Casual games for PC and MacBook.

Alawar's oldest development line. Since the company's founding, it has released over 300 projects in the time management, puzzle video games , and tile-matching video games genres. Alawar casual games are available for PCs running Windows and Mac OS X (the company has more than 70 games for Mac available in the Mac App Store). Main projects include The Treasures of Montezuma, Farm Frenzy, House of 1000 Doors, and others.

Mobile games

Since 2009, Alawar has been porting its games to mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, etc. The company also releases original (ShakeSpears!, Treasures of Montezuma Blitz, Farm Frenzy: New Adventure, etc.) and licensed (Heroes War, etc.) free-to-play mobile games.

Console games

Since 2010, Alawar has been porting its game brands to Nintendo and Sony consoles. 2012 marked the release of the first original Alawar game for consoles: Treasures of Montezuma Blitz. In 2014, the second original game for Sony consoles was released within the Treasures of Montezuma franchise. That same year, the company launched a website dedicated to Sony console projects, playstation.alawar.com. Overall, Alawar has released 8 games for Nintendo DS, 2 for Nintendo DSi, 8 for PSP, 8 for PlayStation 3, and 3 for Vita.

Experimental games

Alawar's internal development team works on projects for Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, and Cardboard. The first game, released in May 2017, made it to the Top 3 of the world's most popular games based on downloads, as well as to the "GearVR Best New Games" list.

  • Game publishing. Alawar opened a publishing department in 1999. Overall, more than 300 games by external teams have been published.
  • Game distribution Alawar's distribution activity is performed by Alawar Digital. Alawar Digital is licensed to distribute more than 1,000 games by 100 different developers, and it operates its own online portals in 10 languages. Since 2004, over 1 billion casual games have been sold on Alawar Digital and partnership sites.

Awards and achievements

2008: Farm Frenzy named the best casual game on RGD 2008.

2008: Farm Frenzy named the best family software 2008 by Disney Family and received the iParenting Media Award.[1]

2008: Alawar received the RuNet Prize 2008 in the "Health and Recreation" category.[2]

2009: Alawar.ru was voted one of the three awardees in the "Website of the Year" category of the Russian Entertainment Awards 2009.[3]

2012: Alawar is included in the Forbes Russia "30 Russian Internet Companies" rating (24th place).[4]

2012: Alawar is named the best publisher by RGD.

2013: Alawar is included in the Top 100 Russian Employers by HeadHunter.[5]

2016: Beholder took the "Excellence in Game Design" and "Best Indie Game of the Year" awards at DevGAMM.[6]

2016: IGN Russia[7] named Beholder as the "Best Adventure 2016".[8]

2017: Beholder won GDWC 2016 in the "Entertainment" category.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "iParenting Media Awards – Outstanding Product 2008 – JumpStart". www.jumpstart.com. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  2. ↑ "Номинанты и Лауреаты". archive.premiaruneta.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  3. ↑ "Портал Omlet.ru вошел в тройку победителей премии Russian Entertainment Awards 2009". Ты знаешь, что можешь! (in Russian). Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  4. ↑ "30 российских интернет-компаний: рейтинг Forbes". www.forbes.ru. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  5. ↑ "Четыре новосибирских компании вошли в сотню лучших работодателей РФ". РИА Новости (in Russian). Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  6. ↑ "DevGAMM Awards Winners". DevGAMM Minsk 2016. 22 November 2016. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  7. ↑ "IGN". Википедия (in Russian). 29 August 2017.
  8. ↑ "Итоги 2016 года". IGN Russia (in Russian). 31 December 2016. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  9. ↑ "Game Development World Championship". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
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